29 November 2012 12:08 PM

Last week, Irish President Michael D. Higgins gave a speech at Manchester University regarding his perception of an ‘intellectual crisis’ in Irish life. It was not the first time that Ireland’s answer to Tony Benn spoke at a British university. Last February, during his first foreign trip as Head of State, President Higgins gave a lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE). He used it to praise George Bernard Shaw’s brand of socialism and to denounce those great voices of liberty, Friedrich Von Hayek and Karl Popper.

In so doing, I believe he came dangerously close to acting outside of his presidential powers. For can you imagine Queen Elizabeth II using a speech at University College Dublin to denounce Cardinal Newman? We all know the Queen would not do that because she profoundly respects her constitutional constraints.

Hayek and Popper, both former professors at LSE, fiercely condemned the totalitarian movements of the Twentieth Century. Hayek believed societies should never be planned or ordered from above, a strategy which leads only to tyranny. Rather, genuine freedom emerges from the free association of individuals, a free market and the common law which preserves both. Similarly, in his famous book The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper argues that the only way to prevent the rise of tyrants is to establish institutions which will ensure they never come to power.

However, while speaking before staff and students at their old university, President Higgins claimed these men provided intellectual nourishment for a ‘utopian vision of the Right’, one in which ‘politics would now take second place to unregulated markets’. And ‘standing in support of unregulated markets, of unaccountable capital flows, of virtual financial products, are scholars who frequently claim the legitimation provided by a university’. I can only take that to mean that scholars who take the side of Hayek and Popper should have no place in a university.

For nearly twenty years I lectured in various universities. For much of that time, I defended the likes of Hayek and Popper because, when left-wing intellectuals were sucking up to Stalin and Mao, both of those brave men were denouncing despotism. And it is this, much more than their economic theories, which, I believe, continues to enrage surviving Marxists.

I did not need the ‘legitimation’ of a university to hold such views. I came to them through reasoned reflection on the human condition and the political models best suited to it. In fact, I began as a leftist intellectual who published books on themes very close to those highly regarded by President Higgins. Steadily, however, I rejected my early leftism because I recognised that, wherever tried and tested, it was a moral and political disaster.

Still, I would never say that leftist intellectuals should have no place in a university. The true function of a university is to let all flowers bloom. The greater the diversity of ideas, the better it is for both students and society.

For President Higgins, however, universities must ‘recover the moral purpose of original thought’ and ‘emancipatory scholarship’. I don’t know what the President means by ‘emancipatory scholarship’, but given that he keeps dropping the names of Marxist intellectuals, I suppose it must mean Marxist theory. How else to explain his language during his Manchester University lecture, when, in the course of attacking Hayek yet again, the President remarked: ‘The changes that have taken place and the relationship between labour and capital have been such that hot money can move in real time’.

Spoken like a true socialist. But is it the role of a president to publicly peddle a socialist agenda? Is it his role to slam intellectuals and economists who don’t agree with his assessment of the fiscal crisis? And is it within his constitutional remit to imply that, by seeking 'legitimation' in a university, such intellectuals are undermining its moral purpose?

No, it is not, for the simple reason that the Irish President is not elected to push ideology. Like the Queen, he is there to serve all the people of Ireland and not just those who share his political bias. However, by consistently attacking ‘right-wing’ intellectuals and their followers, the President is proving that, despite being constitutionally restricted, he cannot control his leftist instincts.

The most disturbing example of this was when, earlier this month, President Higgins launched a new book – Up the Republic- by Irish left-wing author and journalist Fintan O’Toole. First, what business has a Head of State launching any book? More importantly, what business has he publicly endorsing the views of a high priest of fashionable causes like Fintan O’Toole?

True, the President began his speech by stating that he was not endorsing the book’s content. However, he quickly proceeded to state that this did not require him to ‘recant long-held convictions or resile from previously expressed views’. As president, it is one thing to privately retain long-held convictions, but quite another to publicly commend the ‘courageousness’ of all those who contributed to Mr O’Toole’s book, and to hope that it would ‘propel its readers into action’.

What else is this but a ringing endorsement? So, too, was his subsequent comment that the current crisis was not just caused by economic failings, but by a ‘failure of policymakers and influence formers to adequately challenge prevailing assumptions and models that were regarded as holy writ’. In other words, if we had listened to ‘courageous’ influence formers like Fintan O’Toole, rather than those informed by Hayek and Popper, we might not be in such a mess.

I wonder how the President might respond if I invited him to launch one of my books? The following episode may provide a clue. I recall organising the launch of a friend’s first novel back in the Nineties. My friend, a major Irish intellectual in the liberal tradition, invited the President, who was then Minister for Arts and Culture, to launch the book. I still remember his first words: ‘I very nearly declined to launch this novel because I sensed it was too elitist’.

I doubt, in sum, the President would accept my invitation because it seems that, for him, a real intellectual must chant from the same Marxist hymn-book as Fintan O’Toole or the late Eric Hobsbawm. However, if he were really serious about confronting the ‘intellectual crisis’ he thinks exists, he would convene a presidential seminar and bring together intellectuals of all stripes – including yours truly.

The reason I suspect he won’t do that is because our presence there would only prove that all this talk of an 'intellectual crisis' is nonsense. Just because many intellectuals aren’t card-carrying socialists does not mean we are in the midst of an intellectual emergency. Moreover, it might also highlight the hollowness of the left-wing dogma to which the President is so attached.

Either way, there is no justification – constitutional or moral – for an Irish president to use his office to promote an ideological agenda which, upon being elected, he should have deposited at the door of his official residence. And there is certainly no constitutional provision permitting him to travel to Britain to lecture the heirs of Popper and Hayek on why they should reject the teachings of those great men.

If Mr Higgins continues to brush against established constitutional boundaries, he may yet face a ‘crisis’ of his own. Only this time, it definitely won’t be ‘intellectual’.

21 November 2012 6:41 PM

Yesterday’s Guardian carried an article by Theo Hobson on philosopher Roger Scruton’s new book, Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England (Atlantic).

Hobson asks: ‘Is Roger Scruton really a Christian?’ Based on his reading of Our Church, Hobson is ‘inclined to doubt it’. For isn’t it the case that ‘a real Christian will have some account of how the tradition can be renewed, rather than pose as the heroic last defender of one beautiful, tragically doomed cultural expression of it’? That, he says, is ‘romantic paganism, not Christianity’.

What an odd thing to say. Having published two books on Roger Scruton, I can confidently confirm that he is profoundly Christian. Indeed, I can think of no philosopher who has written more persuasively in defence of the religious urge against the likes of Richard Dawkins.

I suspect that what really bothers Hobson is that, like me, Scruton rejects the ‘Disneyfication of faith’.

That is why in my recent book, Why Be a Catholic? I relied heavily on Scruton’s idea of the beautiful to defend the ancient traditions of the old religion. It doesn’t matter that Scruton is an Anglican and I am a Catholic, for we both share the view that ‘to describe the new services as ‘alternatives’ to Cranmer is like describing Eastenders as an ‘alternative’ to Shakespeare, or Lady Gaga as an ‘alternative’ to Bach’.

In my Catholic vernacular that sentence would read: ‘To describe the liturgy of the post-Vatican II era as an ‘alternative’ to the ancient rites of the Church is like describing Tracey Emin as an ‘alternative’ to Michelangelo’.

The modern world is full of people who think that everything can be attained on the cheap, that you can get by with little or no effort. However, what you certainly cannot obtain with the click of a mouse is a true understanding of religious faith. For a Catholic, the only way to penetrate the depths of his religious tradition is by immersing himself in the liturgical riches which lead us all the way back to the world of the first apostles.

Hobson believes that, if it wants to 'stay alive', a church must ‘update verbal forms that were devised hundreds of years ago’. I am not quite sure what he means by ‘update’, but my hunch is that it’s a euphemism for ‘discard’.

If Scruton believes that the language of Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible forms ‘the real essence’ of the Church of England, it is for the same reason that I believe the Latin liturgy forms the real essence of Catholicism. ‘Update’ it and you risk losing touch with the sacred sources, and, thus, sacrificing the intelligibility of the ritual.

Pope Benedict XVI puts it well when he writes: ‘Many people have felt and said that liturgy must be “made” by the whole community if it really to belong to them. Such an attitude has led to the “success” of the liturgy being measured by its effect at the level of spectacle and entertainment. It is to lose sight of what is distinctive to the liturgy, which does not come from what we do but from the fact that something is taking place here that all of us together cannot “make”. In the liturgy there is a power, an energy at work which not even the Church as a whole can generate: what it manifests is the Wholly Other, coming to us through the community’.

If Hobson is ‘not sure’ that he and Scruton belong to the same religion, it is because the happy-clappy version of Anglicanism that his generation has been weaned on, bears little resemblance to the Church formed and rooted in the Book of Common Prayer.

With echoes of the Pope, Scruton writes: ‘The vandalisation of the Anglican liturgy occurred, interestingly enough, at about the same time as the jettisoning of the Latin Mass, and in both cases we see the mark of a disaffected priesthood, unable, without a sense of humiliating theatricality, to perform the traditional rites and ceremonies of the Church. New translations of the Bible and new hymnals emerged in tandem with the new services, the whole amounting to what many saw not merely as an aesthetic disaster, but as a doctrinal heresy. For a sacramental church is not just a place where people get together to announce their adherence to a set of laws, or to bone up on the principles of Biblical theology. It is a place where people come to encounter God, to stand in his presence, and to look with renewed awe on the troubling fact of their own existence, and on the need to be in everyday life what they perforce must be in church – humble members of the Body of Christ’.

If there is a crisis of belief in the Anglican and Catholic churches, it is because the gimmicky liturgy which Theo Hobson seems to favour is unconvincing to an educated laity.

Thankfully, Pope Benedict has responded to this by restoring the liturgical wonders of the Catholic faith, thus giving many people, as Scruton correctly states, their ‘first inkling of what Christianity really means’.

I don’t know if the new Archbishop of Canterbury intends to respond likewise. If, as I hope, he does, he should begin by reading Our Church. In so doing, Archbishop Wilby will discover that the ‘bien-pensant pronouncements’ of his predecessor ‘have done little to reassure English Anglicans that the Church is really prepared to stand up for their beliefs and values against the onslaught of political correctness’.

For it is only by rediscovering that the ‘Anglican rite refers to the “communion of the saints”,’ and that this ‘membership is offered in the Communion service as a transcendent ideal’, that the Church of England can return to its roots as a ‘channel through which the Christian revelation has flowed down the centuries, and around which has grown the culture, the national identity and the sense of collective obligation’ that is so characteristic of the English at their best.

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15 November 2012 5:01 PM

The most rewarding aspect of writing for the Daily Mail is the extraordinary people I get to meet. Few, however, have managed to astonish me more than the reader who recently burst into my life.

It was late one afternoon when I received an email from a Mr NM Gwynne. As I like to respond to readers promptly, I opened it to find a request for a copy of a column I published last year on the virtues of hand writing. It transpired that Mr Gwynne was writing a book and wished to cite my article.

Now, many people write to inform me of their book projects, but this was different. Nevile Gwynne had been commissioned by one of the world’s most prestigious publishers to produce a book on English grammar. By the time he contacted me, the text was almost ready for the press.

It soon became clear that Mr Gwynne was no amateur. His new work is based on a booklet, Gwynne’s Grammar, which he recently showcased in a series of lectures at Selfridges department store in London. These two-hour sessions in the store’s Ultralounge were a sensation.

It is now 25 years since Nevile Gwynne moved from England to live in Co. Wexford. He did so because he yearned to dwell where the social and cultural atmosphere of his youth still endured. That was a time of order, authority and moral harmony.

And now, as he and his wife sit amid the ruins of our civilisation, Mr Gwynne has set himself the noble task of sustaining the light of learning. This is how he describes what he does: ‘Formerly a successful businessman, NM Gwynne has for many years been teaching just about every sort of subject to just about every sort of pupil in just about every sort of circumstance – English, Latin, Greek, French, German, mathematics, History, classical philosophy, natural medicine, the elements of music and how to start and run your own business’.

Nevile Gwynne is the archetypal polymath, one who recognises that knowledge is much more than a luxury. For him, it is the bedrock of our social and moral order. Dumb it down and you destroy the foundations, not only of society, but of humanity itself.

When Mr Gwynne uses the word ‘knowledge’ he does not mean ‘information’, but that capacity to delve beneath the surface in order to discover how things really function. Hence his teaching methods are, as he writes, ‘very much in accordance with the traditional common-sense ones, refined over centuries, that were used almost everywhere until they were abolished worldwide in the 1960s’. So where and how does he teach?

Remarkably, Nevile Gwynne does not hold a university chair. In fact, the only chair he uses is the one situated behind his computer. For, despite being a septuagenarian, he is a skilled practitioner of Skype, the online video communication service.

Through Skype, he has taught people from across the world, his youngest student being a two-year-old American who he schooled in Latin. Indeed, one of his boasts is that ‘I can teach people more Latin in half an hour on Skype, than the Cambridge Latin Course can manage in 18 months’. Let me tell you why I believe this is true.

As Mr Gwynne rarely leaves Wexford, he asked if we could meet on Skype. Initially, I was not keen as I don’t believe in hiding behind a screen. However, I was finally persuaded and we ‘met’ last week.

Soon after our conversation commenced, I forgot that I was speaking to Mr Gwynne through a computer. For nearly two hours, we discussed politics, education, philosophy, journalism and ethics. Without warning, I was transported back to a time when people sought to live in the glow of high ideals.

I was lucky to have been educated by such people. Like Mr Gwynne, they believed that grammar is not confined to the study of language, but underpins everything we do. As he explains, the techniques of any activity ‘must be learned as a science – often very painstakingly in the case of the most satisfying and enjoyable occupations – before the budding practitioner can expect to flourish at it’.

In an age when ‘the public has been preposterously asked to believe the basics of how to do something destroys a child’s creativity’, Nevile Gwynne stands as a stunning corrective to child-centred claptrap. Both humorous and dignified, he reminds us that the task for a true teacher is not to make knowledge relevant to students, but to ensure that students transmit knowledge to the next generation. But this is simply not possible in the absence of grammar, which is why its rejection by the educational establishment was such a crime. For how are we expected to properly express our thoughts without the ability to form complete sentences?

Gwynne’s Grammar is much more than an excellent introduction to the writing of good English. It is nothing less than a guide to the good life. Speak rightly, it insists, and you will savour the joy of ‘thinking and deciding rightly’. As such, ‘happiness depends at least partly on good grammar’.

Such is the joyful wisdom of a marvellous moralist and terrific teacher who can, I promise, transform your life in half an hour.

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07 November 2012 5:58 PM

On Saturday, the Irish people will vote in a Children's Rights referendum. Barring a miracle, the proposed amendment to the Constitution will be convincingly passed. As I see it, those campaigning for a No vote made one fatal mistake. Instead of arguing about what may or may not happen in the event of the referendum being passed, why didn’t they attack the very notion of ‘children’s rights’? Why didn’t they seek to expose the philosophical incoherence of their opponents’ ‘rights talk’?

Writing in yesterday’s Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole stated that ‘most of the No campaign is driven not by justified anger but by ideology’. That’s rich coming from someone who’s such a fan of the human rights industry. For isn't it true that nothing is more ideologically-driven than the rights agenda?

In the hands of left-wingers, rights are emptied of their moral worth. More often than not, rights are used to promote their pet causes and silence their political adversaries. They are used to inoculate certain sections of society from criticism and moral accountability.

The result is a proliferation of ‘animal rights’, ‘gay rights’, ‘Traveller’s rights’ and now ‘children’s rights’. American legal expert Mary Ann Glendon states that this rapidly expanding catalogue of rights, ‘extending to trees, animals, smokers, non-smokers, consumers – not only multiplies the occasions for collisions, but it risks trivialising core democratic values’. For example, ‘a tendency to frame nearly every social controversy in terms of a clash of rights impedes compromise, mutual understanding, and the discovery of common ground’.

What’s more, we rarely inquire as to the origin of these so-called ‘rights’. Are they natural or invented, divinely endowed or simply State-sanctioned? It is universally assumed that all human beings have a natural right to life and limb, but does the fox have a natural right to savage my sheep or the Traveller an inalienable right to settle on my land?

It is obvious to me that such ‘rights’ are nothing more than ideological fictions. In fact, they should not be called rights at all, for doesn’t a right imply a corresponding duty? Aren’t rights something you earn through obedience and responsibility?

Put simply, my rights or freedoms are guaranteed only in so far as I respect those of others. I have, for example, a responsibility to uphold the law and respect private property. Should I fail in my duty to do so, I forfeit my rights.

However, in our rights-saturated culture the concept of responsibility has all but disappeared. Rights are claimed without any moral cost, meaning they are better defined as ‘demands’. Think of all those demanding their rights and ask how many of them ever mention their duties.

This is no less true in the case of children. Recently, I was told by my seven-year-old that I had no right to prevent him from viewing a television programme. To my son, his right to view the programme trumped my right to stop him. Naturally, I dismissed his ‘right’ as a baseless demand which ran counter to his long-term good.

Only a child-centred fantasist would claim that children naturally understand the difference between right and wrong, or that they are emotionally capable of forming moral judgments. It is only through the gradual process of moral discipline that a child comes to recognise the limitations on his freedom. It is only through moral education that he begins to see the intrinsic relationship between rights and responsibilities.

The State is great for inventing rights, but since when is it in the business of morally educating children? Doesn’t it rely on parents to do just that, to bring up their offspring as responsible citizens who will respect the State and its laws? If so, why complicate the parent-child relationship with ‘rights talk’ that is, at best, empty rhetoric?

If the State were really interested in the moral welfare of children, it would stop trying to undermine family life. As pointed out by Mary Ann Glendon, where, if not in the home, ‘do citizens acquire the capacity to care about the common good? Where do people learn to view others with respect and concern, rather than regard them as objects, means, or obstacles? Where does a boy or girl develop the healthy independence of mind and self-confidence that enable men and women to participate effectively in government and to exercise responsible leadership?’

Now we all know that this country has its fair share of dysfunctional families. We all know the appalling legacy of abuse inflicted on the innocent by parents and institutions. Still, to assume that a rights-based referendum will prevent future abuse is wishful thinking.

Why not simply use the prevailing constitutional arrangements to directly target those suspected of abuse? After all, it was not a failing in the Constitution that allowed a culture of child cruelty to flourish. Neither was it the fault of the Constitution that State agencies neglected to do their job properly. If anything, child abuse thrived here because the Constitution was inadequately enforced.

The tragedy is we have become so accustomed to ‘rights talk’, we think it is the panacea to all our social and moral ills. Slap on a few more rights here, a few more there and, hey presto, we’ll have a new moral order!

Not so. The sad truth remains that as rights inflate, true freedom dies.

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05 November 2012 7:20 PM

Isn’t it bizarre how liberals like to lecture us on safeguarding children, while simultaneously depriving them of their moral safeguards? A stunning example of this is a new website designed by the NHS and partly funded by the EU. Respect Yourself is aimed at children from 13 upwards and was recently rolled out across secondary schools in Warwickshire and Coventry.

Of course, once you open the site you quickly realise it has more to do with pollution than respect. Based on a Dutch sex education programme, Respect Yourself aims at ‘helping you understand your body a bit better, and the body of someone who’s got different dangly bits than you’. According to the site’s campaign manager, ‘we have completed the young people’s wish list. They asked for the sextionary, pleasure zones, and the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered honestly’.

And what, you might ask, is a ‘sextionary’? Ostensibly, it is a glossary of technical and slang sexual terms. In reality, it is an explicit guide to all manner of sexual activity, including acts most of us would regard as perverted.

The ‘pleasure zones’ page features computer generated male and female figures, each with buttons on what we used call the ‘private parts’. Click the buttons and you get computerised images of the genitals. Scroll down, however, and you get photos of the real thing.

There is a section devoted to contraception, in which we are told that ‘more young people are beginning to go Double Dutch. This is where condoms are used with another form of contraception for extra protection against infections and pregnancy’. Frequently Asked Questions include: ‘What’s a threesome?’, ‘Where can I buy the Karma Sutra?’, and dozens more which are simply too explicit to print.

A spokesman for the Family Education Trust reacted to the site by saying that ‘parents throughout the region will be appalled that health professionals have supported the development of a resource that condones sexual experimentation by young people, and uses crude and sometimes even foul language’. Defending Respect Yourself, Warwickshire County Council said ‘we can understand that parents may be concerned by some of the content on this website. However, please be reassured that this site has been put together with a lot of thought, care and attention’. How very reassuring.

Those defending the site say its principal aim is to cut teenage pregnancies. But how on earth can you cut teenage pregnancy by encouraging teenagers to engage in promiscuity? How can you hope to encourage self-respect among young people when you invite them to see sex as a recreational sport?

The whole point of sexual virtue was to teach children that while sex is a gift, it is one that should be used wisely. It was based on the belief that the body is not something separate from the self, but is a person’s incarnation. Abuse of the body is, therefore, self-abuse.

The rapist and the child abuser casually dismiss sexual morality. For them, the victim is pure body devoid of self. It is just one more object to use as they see fit.

Why, then, do we think it reasonable to teach children that there are no ethical costs to carefree sex? Why do we think it ‘healthy’ for them to view sex as a demoralised zone? And why, in such a climate, do we react with horror when children are sexually exploited and the rates of teenage pregnancy continue to soar?

The only way that children can be taught to respect themselves is not by repressing sexual desire. It is by showing them that they are not all body and that sex ought never to be treated as an end in itself. If anything, it is that through which we unite with another person, one that can’t be substituted or discarded.

To repudiate that view as either old-fashioned or prudish is to hand a victory to the Jimmy Savilles of this world. It is to deprive children of those internal moral safeguards which protect them from predators. It is to send them as innocents into a pornographic paradise where they can so easily be reduced to objects of sexual gratification.

The question we now face is this: How long before a website modelled on Respect Yourself goes nationwide? How long before we are told it is a child’s ‘right’ to have his sexual curiosity answered in such graphic terms? How long before parents are prevented from teaching their children that sex deprived of virtue is a travesty of true love?

The fact that Respect Yourself is partly funded by the EU, suggests it won’t be too long. Are we, therefore, going to sit by and wait for the ‘inevitable’ tide of ‘progress’ to wash over us, or are we going to defend our children from those who think it ‘natural’ for 13-year-olds to learn about threesomes through taxpayer-funded school resources?

Deep in their hearts, all parents know this is unnatural. They know it is nothing short of a moral crime to rob a child of his innocence by ceasing to idealise sex.

That is why, as the old saying goes, we should send Respect Yourself to Coventry. But now that it's there, we should do everything in our power to make sure it stays.

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27 September 2012 7:37 PM

Where are they now? Where are the countless celebrities who, not so long ago, were screaming in defence of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot? Doesn’t consistency now demand that they publicly defend those whose anti-Islamic film has caused such uproar across the Muslim world?

In response to the celebrity clamour in favour of Pussy Riot, I asked this simple question: ‘Why aren’t critics of Islam supported with similar zeal?’ Why, in other words, is there an international outcry when action is taken against those who desecrate a Christian cathedral, while not a murmur is heard when people have a go at Islam? The answer is clear: Fear tinged with political correctness and a large dollop of moral hypocrisy.

There is no moral courage in attacking Christianity. It is, after all, a religion of love, forgiveness and peace. True, there were moments in its history when those virtues gave way to cruelty and fanaticism. Today, however, Christianity has never been closer to its Founder’s message.

That is why I have nothing but admiration for those willing to challenge Islamic fanatics. For to defy those who would distort their religion in the name of Jihad or Holy War, is an act of true valour. And where there is genuine courage you rarely find what Sinead O’Connor calls ‘true artists’.

As it happens, I speak from bitter experience. While writing for another newspaper in 2004, I was asked by a group of moderate Muslims to shed light on the shadier side of Irish Islam. In a series of subsequent dispatches, I disclosed the fact that there were, indeed, Muslims with Irish passports waging Jihad in Iraq.

Not once did I criticise Islam or the Holy Prophet, nor would I. And yet, following publication of my first article, I received a menacing phone call from a leading Muslim accusing me of ‘working for the Jews’. A week later, I was escorted from the set of Ireland’s premier chat show by police, who had received information of a serious threat to my safety.

During the dark days that followed, few people came to my defence. Those who did, such as seasoned Irish journalists Eoghan Harris, Jim Cusack and Kevin Myers, had previously fought their own lonely battles against fanaticism. The rest either stayed silent or cautioned me against going further.

Courage demands going for the tough target. It demands standing up to those, in any sphere of life, who threaten and intimidate. That includes people who invoke the Almighty, or who are driven by what Edmund Burke condemned as ‘armed doctrine’.

Still, it is one thing opposing religious fanaticism, and quite another to gratuitously insult the sacred elements of a person’s faith. While investigating Irish Islam, my aim was never to undermine or pour scorn on the sacred tenets of that religion. In fact, I can readily say that we in the West could learn much from the pious practices of ordinary Muslims.

That is why, even though I am sickened by the moral hypocrisy of those who would jump to support Pussy Riot, but run for cover when someone slights Islam, I cannot condone those in California whose film has inflamed Muslim sentiment. Let them mock the fanatics if they like, but by vulgarly depicting the Prophet they have offended all Muslims.

No doubt, the film’s makers and defenders will invoke ‘freedom of speech’. It is true that free speech ought to be sacrosanct in a democratic society. But ‘freedom of speech’ should never be used to debase those things which others regard as holy.

We should, in other words, be able to ask why certain Muslims resort to terror and intimidation without, at the same time, risking our personal safety. This is a legitimate question which needs to be answered if Muslims are to peacefully settle in the West. And it is one that can be asked without resorting to what most members of that faith would regard as blasphemy.

Put simply, respecting holy things is no threat to free speech. If anything, it is to use wisely the precious gift of liberty. It is to use it, not as a weapon to offend, but as a means to rationally dialogue and debate.

In so doing, the hope is that you will isolate the fanatics from the moderates. That, at least, has been my experience in relation to Islam. In fact, it very soon became obvious to Muslim moderates living in Ireland, that they had more in common with me than with many of their co-religionists.

The problem with Pussy Riot, and the makers of the anti-Islamic film, is that they don’t know where to draw the line. They think freedom of speech should smash all moral boundaries and reach right in to the core of religion. They think that defiling a sacred sanctuary and insulting the Prophet Mohammed are legitimate forms of protest.

In the case of Pussy Riot, that may win you the cheers of politically correct celebrities. In the case of the anti-Islamic filmmakers, it may earn you hero status among those who think that, concealed behind every burka, is a suicide bomber.

One thing it won’t do is win you the support of ordinary Christians and Muslims who might well have been your best allies in different circumstances.

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23 August 2012 1:49 PM

*This is my weekly column as it appeared in yesterday's Irish Daily Mail

Am I really the only person who believes the Russian courts were right to jail the three members of the punk band Pussy Riot? Am I the only one who thinks their unauthorised performance of a ‘punk prayer’ at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, was a gross act of desecration? And am I alone in finding Western hysteria surrounding the singers’ conviction, a sickening exhibition of moral hypocrisy?

Consider German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remarks following last Friday’s sentencing of the three women to two years in prison. She claimed the ‘excessively harsh’ sentence was ‘not compatible with the European values of law and democracy’. Good to know that European ‘values’ now include blasphemy and sacrilege.

And what of Irish singer Sinead O’Connor’s comment that ‘these ladies are showing spiritual leadership in times of great crisis and that is the job of true artists’? Funny, but I thought the job of a true artist was to shine a light on the sacred and not to ‘do dirt' on it. And how, pray tell, is gyrating around the sanctuary of a Cathedral an act of ‘spiritual leadership’?

What’s more, I don’t remember too many ‘artists’ like Pussy Riot or Miss O’Connor, using their public platform to denounce the communist despots of the old Soviet Union. No, back then it was ‘American tyranny’ they were denouncing. Back then, their heroes were those, like Chairman Mao, who considered the concentration camp as the only place worthy of ‘true artists’.

Writing in Monday’s Irish Times, writer and musician Ian Maleney commented that people like Pussy Riot ‘want the freedom to do, say and think as they wish, without the undue pressure and influence of the government. It’s a basic civil right’. No, it is not, for even the great liberal John Stuart Mill believed that when such freedom ‘harms’ other people, it must be curtailed.

Those who were harmed by Pussy Riot’s antics were not only the Russian Orthodox worshippers of Christ the Saviour, but, I suspect, most people who still believe in the sacred. The jailed singers claim they were entreating the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Vladimir Putin. If so, why did they think that trampling on sacred soil was a good way to earn the Blessed Virgin’s favour?

Imagine, for a moment, that rather than invade a Christian church, Pussy Riot decided to perform their ‘punk prayer’ in a mosque. In such circumstances, do you think Western politicians, commentators or ‘artists’ would be queuing up to support them? Do you really think the politically correct High Command would be so vocal in its praise?

We, in the West, have become so immune to attacks on Christianity, that we can see nothing wrong with a bunch of punks prancing around the sanctuary of an iconic Cathedral. We defend their sacrilege by invoking freedom of speech and civil rights. No sympathy, of course, for those who were deeply offended by their actions, or for the rights of those who simply wish to worship in peace.

Why aren’t critics of Islam supported with similar zeal? Where are the ‘true artists’ when brave Muslim women take issue with certain aspects of their faith? Are they not also showing spiritual leadership in times of great crisis? As I say, moral hypocrisy.

My own view is that neither a church nor a mosque is a fitting place to make any form of protest. Both should be respected as places where the sacred has made its home on earth. It is there, on that holy soil, that worshippers believe they make direct contact with their Creator.

To use this space for anything other than worship is wanton desecration. Liberals who have become desensitised to the sacred may scoff at that suggestion. But for those who still regard certain places as hallowed, nothing can compensate for even the slightest violation.

The old woman agitated at the sight of children running across the altar of our local church, was not overreacting. For her, as for me, that altar represents what T.S. Eliot described as the ‘point of intersection of the timeless with time’. It is where Christ Himself is made present and, thus, where the promise of our salvation is fulfilled.

I cannot conceive of people using that sacred altar for political purposes. I cannot conceive of them squawking and jumping around the Sanctuary as a way of attracting attention to their cause. That is not spiritual leadership but, if anything, an assault on the spiritual.

There is nothing wrong with legitimate protest. But no cause, however great, can morally justify the desecration of holy things, for that is to wound those whose lives revolve around them. Then again, perhaps Pussy Riot and their supporters think worshippers at Christ the Saviour are simply collateral damage.

Sinead O’Connor believes ‘artists are there to push the boundaries’ and that, by ‘using music as a priesthood’, Pussy Riot have ‘made a very powerful artistic statement’. It is neither powerful nor priestly to desecrate a church and offend its congregation. In fact, I can’t think of a softer target.

Let’s hope their prison term will give them space to consider the difference between truly audacious activism, and that which requires no courage at all.

08 August 2012 5:17 PM

Can there be any word in our language that is abused more than ‘liberation’? For isn’t it ridiculous to use the same word when referring to the emancipation of those imprisoned at Auschwitz and what pseudo-psychologists call ‘sexual liberation’? Surely, delivering from people from tyranny does not equate to letting it all hang out.

Furthermore, what exactly are those who let it all hang out liberated from? According to the gurus of our therapeutic culture, they have been freed from unhealthy inhibitions and harmful prudery. But, surely, it is unhealthier to shamelessly exhibit the human body than to idealise it?

That question sounds quaint in a society that revels in nudity. Everywhere you look, human flesh is obscenely on display. The young are now so accustomed to nakedness that they roam the streets, their underwear barely concealing what we used call the ‘private parts’ and, in the case of teenage males, their hands tucked down the front of their trousers.

For them, the human is perceived as pure body. Having grown up in a society awash with pornography, they have no knowledge of what William Blake called ‘the human form divine’. The result is that they don't understand why it is morally harmful to publicly flaunt the ‘private parts’.

Now, I do not say that, in itself, nudity is wrong or immoral. Indeed, I reject the old moral consensus which insisted that, because the body belongs to the ‘nonsense of mortality’, it has no intrinsic value. If that was a recipe for repression, it was because it ignored the fact that we are not separate from our bodies, but revealed in and through them.

Art, as Roger Scruton teaches, has always been conscious of this truth. When, for example, you look at a painted nude, you don’t see a soul but an embodied being. You see flesh spread across the canvas, just as, when viewing pornography, you see flesh spread across the screen.

Superficially, there is little difference between the porn star and the painter’s nude subject. Both may possess beautiful bodies and exemplify physical perfection. Look a little deeper, however, and you will see that they have nothing in common.

When a person sits naked for a class of budding artists, the focus is not on the subject’s nudity. What they endeavour to capture is the mystery of the human form revealed in the flesh. As such, the painting is not a source of titillation, but of fascination.

Whereas the porn star invites you to look ‘at’ him, the painted subject invites you to look ‘into’ him. In so doing, you don’t see the flesh as an end in itself, but as a revelation of the person whose body it is. That is why, even when everything is on display, there is nothing graphic in classically painted nudes.

In pornography, there is flesh and only flesh. The person has been eclipsed by his animal particulars. No longer is the body a revelation of the individual, but that which conceals him.

That is what Blake meant when he described the human form as divine. The mystery of the human condition is that while we are as much a part of the material world as the animals, we are not entirely of it. Even though we are incarnate beings, we each provide a unique perspective on the world. Indeed, it is only through us that the world is made known.

If the body is a source of wonder, it is because it reveals a person who can resist its impulses. Why, then, do we think that letting it all hang out leads to liberation? Why do we think that reducing the human being to his body is a great stride forward for freedom?

A truly free being is not one who rejects or represses the body, but one who holds what he does under the light of judgment. It is one who can stand back from his immediate predicament so as to morally assess his actions. It is only when we see ourselves as all flesh, that we become enslaved.

In an age when books like Fifty Shades of Grey are smashing records, and when celebrities think nothing of flaunting their flesh, it is hard to convince children they should do otherwise. In such a sex-saturated culture, it is difficult to persuade them that we are not simply the sum of our body parts. And yet, that is what parents like me must do if we don’t want to compromise our children’s integrity.

For their sake, we must go to war with the surrounding culture. We must defy those who confuse happiness with physical pleasure, and who think that letting it all hang out is ‘healthy’. That is because there is nothing healthy in teaching a child to focus on the flesh at the expense of the person revealed through it.

There is nothing healthy in parading around the streets with your hand shoved down your trousers. There is nothing healthy in making public those parts which the rest of us would prefer you kept private.

If anything, such behaviour is sick, a sign that the offender has no idea what it means to be human. And it is only when we are honest enough to confront it as a sickness, that we shall finally see how foolish we were to conflate it with freedom.

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27 July 2012 5:36 PM

The debate prompted by my previous post on gay marriage (see comments under 'Why to be against gay marriage is not bigoted') raises some interesting questions and observations. But it also calls for some further clarification of my position which I shall use this post to provide.

First, comments have been made to the effect that, rather than arguing from pure reason, I am arguing from a position of faith. It is true that, as I made clear in earlier posts, I consider marriage to be a sacrament. As a philosopher, however, I am obliged to analyse things from a non-religious perspective. The points I made about human nature are regularly made by a host of secular philosophers, social scientists, etc. The fact that they tend towards the same conclusions as, say, Thomist theologians does not, in any way, undermine their philosophical efficacy. It just means that the same common sense approach to human nature is adopted by both groups.

That aside, the central point I was endeavouring to make was that all forms of sexuality are not equal. While that may sound counter-intuitive to our postmodern ears, the fact remains that heterosexual union is essentially different from a homosexual union. That is not a religious, or even a philosophical observation. It is simple biology that the first is teleological or goal-directed, while the second is not. There is a natural outcome to the first which is absent from the second. As Aristotle might say, it is true that this potential is not actualised in the case of infertile heterosexual couples. But they, of course, are exceptions to the general norm. Yes, as I said in the original post, both heterosexual and homosexual unions are 'potential expressions of love'. The fact remains, however, that there is a natural outcome to one form of sexuality which is denied to the other. To repeat what I wrote: To deny that fact is to deny the fundamentals of human nature. Put simply, I don't see how anyone can credibly argue that there is an 'intrinsic equality of sexuality'.

That fact alone is, I believe, enough to warrant special status for heterosexual marriage. But what of the argument that marriage is a social or cultural institution that can and should evolve to suit our current desires and needs? Again, I repeat what I said previously: marriage is not an artificial institution but one rooted in human nature. By this I mean that marriage was a direct response to the fundamental requirements and pressures of heterosexual union. And yes, those requirements include the domestic, legal and moral welfare of children, as well as safeguarding the family from the threat of sexual jealousy. That is not something which can be adapted or redefined without changing the very nature of the institution, or, indeed, without radically altering the very nature of the social order we have hitherto known and enjoyed. In other words, gay marriage is self-defeating for, as Scruton puts it, 'to regard gay marriage as simply another option within the institution is to ignore the fact that an institution shapes the motive for joining it. Marriage has grown around the idea of sexual difference and all that sexual difference means. To make this feature accidental rather than essential is to change marriage beyond recognition'.

But let us say you still reject everything I have just said. Let us say you agree with Richard Rorty in the 'priority of the social', or that all our beliefs, practices and institutions are not rooted in Nature, God or Truth, but are simply the product of social consensus. Even then, proponents of gay marriage would still have to say why they believe a radical redefinition of marriage and the family would be better for society than its traditional arrangements. Even then, in other words, the argument will boil down to whether or not society as a whole will benefit from such a profound change. So far, I have yet to see any convincing arguments of the sort.

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13 July 2012 6:50 PM

Last week, I went on radio to discuss the contentious issue of gay marriage. It is a difficult issue for me as I have a wonderful cousin who is ‘married’ to his long-time partner in California. And yet, even with that extraordinary example of love before me, I cannot be convinced that gay marriage is good for society.

Surprisingly, the radio debate was calm, rational and relatively good humoured. Ordinarily, such debates quickly descend into chaos, with accusations of ‘homophobia’ and ‘bigotry’ being hurled at those opposing changes to the traditional institution.

The reason why the radio debate proceeded smoothly was because we did not let emotion cloud the ideas. Too often, participants hop aboard their ideological bandwagon in an effort to silence their opponents. Too often, they allow righteous anger get in the way of a good argument.

Conservatives are no less prone to this than their liberal adversaries. Sometimes, they become so consumed with rage that they rant incoherently. In so doing, they lose a fight which is, I believe, theirs to win.

This means, as we go forward in this debate, that conservatives must stop treating liberal supporters of gay marriage as sinister ideologues. It was ridiculous for Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister to declare that gay marriage is the biggest civil rights issue of this generation. We should not, however, extend get exercised about those who offer rational arguments in their defence.

Liberals become irrational when they claim that their conservative adversaries are ‘homophobic’. For, by suggesting that his opponent is sick, rather than just someone with a different opinion, he undermines any possibility of logical debate. It would, of course, be tempting to counter that the liberal is ‘heterophobic’, but what useful purpose would such a slur serve?

Slurs don’t win debates, they merely stymie them. Far better, then, for both sides to mount credible arguments which shed light, rather than shade, on complex moral issues. But this, in turn, means that everything – and I mean everything - should be put on the table for discussion.

In the case of gay marriage, this demands that we have to stop pretending as though human nature did not exist. Thanks to the climate of fear which has for too long surrounded this debate, we have swallowed the line that human nature is not fixed, but can be manipulated to suit cultural trends. As such, we have forgotten that marriage is not an artificial institution, but one rooted in human nature.

For example, on a recent radio outing one Irish MP announced that he believes in the ‘intrinsic equality of sexuality’, and that ‘all forms of sexuality are completely equal’. Conservatives need not respond to those views with fits of vituperation. They are wide open to refutation on purely intellectual grounds.

The trick is not to lapse into an ideological default mode, but to confront such statements with philosophical authority. And confront them we must, because to concede that all forms of sexuality are intrinsically equal is to concede everything. For once that is agreed, you can no longer argue that marriage is a uniquely heterosexual institution.

The fact is, of course, that heterosexual sexuality is essentially different from its homosexual counterpart. While both are potential expressions of love, and while both are sources of pleasure, only heterosexual union is intrinsically goal-directed. That is to say, only heterosexual union is capable of natural procreation.

To deny that fact is to deny the fundamentals of human nature. But when we deny this, we forget why it is that heterosexual union possesses ‘intrinsic nuptiality’. Marriage stabilises a union which presupposes the creation of children, and which, when inoculated against infidelity by a solemn vow, secures the future of the family.

Put simply, marriage is not a culturally-formed institution but one which has its source in the requirements of nature. That is why it is simply mistaken to argue that ‘all forms of sexuality are completely equal’. For this is to imply that a form of sexuality which has no intrinsic aim is equal to that which does.

Altering the definition of marriage so as to include homosexual union is not, therefore, merely a cosmetic change. It is to radically redefine the very meaning of the institution. And it is to redefine it in such a way that the biological, philosophical and religious foundations of that institution are dismantled.

Now, I have no doubt that what I have just argued will be dismissed by some as ‘homophobic’. But as I discovered on radio last week, there are many within gay and liberal circles that are not afraid of rational debate. Like me, they value the views of their opponents, especially when they are couched in courtesy.

I hope it is in this spirit that the debate surrounding gay marriage will continue in the months ahead. For this is one debate which we conservatives cannot afford to lose. But we run the risk of doing so if, by responding to unfounded allegations, we sacrifice cold logic to hot fury.

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Mark Dooley

Dr Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, author and broadcaster. From 2003-2006, he wrote a controversial column on foreign affairs for the Sunday Independent. Since 2006, he has written for the Irish Daily Mail, where his popular 'Moral Matters' column appears weekly. He has held lectureships at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and at University College Dublin where he was John Henry Newman Scholar of Theology. His 8 books include a widely-acclaimed intellectual biography of English philosopher Roger Scruton, and a robust defence of traditional Catholicism in 'Why Be a Catholic?'